#ambiguousloss

[jordanreallylikesrocks]

I’ve always known I’d cut you off

I knew you’d force me too

It was always in the back of my mind, actually

A truth I’d push away for the temporary comfort of illusion

An illusion I had to subscribe to for my safety

And now that the time is here

And you are no longer allowed to into my hemisphere

I can not say that I am surprised

And yet I’m still mourning

The hope,

The ghost

of who I always prayed you will be

And who you never became

[jordanreallylikesrocks]

So many feelings.

So many thoughts.

Today I wondered if I should reach out to you.

I quickly realized that would be a mistake.

It’s something I very much should not do.

And yet, I still wonder

Because although I’ve learned to fill the gaps

With the Holy Spirit, joy of life, this and that

I still miss you

And the echoes of your silence still remain in my heart.

No longer a visceral scream

But a silent whisper

Calling me forward

Beckoning me

In a dangerously sweet voice

To just reach out

But instead, this time, I will reach

Within.

[flickeredsilence]

Intro!

My name is Anastasia, and I am a 22 year old from the northeastern US. During all the chaos of the beginning of the pandemic, my dad was diagnosed with early onset dementia. It was devastating. As time went on after his 2020 diagnosis, it became increasingly more apparent that I would pretty much be responsible for his care (with the help of my loving mom). The diagnosis came right around the time that I graduated high school. By the end of that summer after graduation, I had withdrawn from my dream college. I was grateful to be trusted with the responsibility of being my father's caregiver, but the weight of such was sometimes absolutely crushing. That weight became more obvious as the disease progressed. After about four years, my dad passed away from the disease in July of 2024.

Despite a popular piece of advice for caregivers being to journal experiences and emotions, I found it very hard to do so. It felt like with every journal entry I made, I was staring the reality of the bleak situation in its face. It would leave me feeling scared and depressed. So I stopped journaling, and found other, more helpful coping mechanisms. Some were healthier than others. While I didn't feel comfortable journaling, I still felt really guilty for not doing so, because I knew I would inevitably forget so much. As my dad entered the end stages of the disease, I couldn't perform any of my coping mechanisms as I became paralyzed with physical and mental exhaustion.

All this being said, I am now about five months out from my dad's passing, and I am feeling the genuine need to write. To document what I can remember from the complete whirlwind that was the past four years. I don't think I will write these entries in chronological order. I will probably just write as things come back to me, and maybe organize them at a later time. This is my attempt to help myself grieve, and maybe connect with a few people who had similar experiences. I will share stories, as well as books, music, and pictures from the last four years.

If you stumble upon this, and you are a young person going through something similar, I am so sorry. I see you. I know that what you are going through is extraordinarily difficult. But there is an end, and there is an after. Maybe you can't see it right now (I know I couldn't), but it's there somewhere.

[hanginoutwithgrief]

A Letter to Grief

Do you remember the day we met? You were a bank of grey clouds, rolling forward, swallowing everything in your path. I was running home, running from you, and I felt the pressure of you at my back. You pushed against me, so hard that all of me broke into a million tiny jagged pieces. Your clouds swirled and danced around the pieces of me, caught the biggest one, and embedded me into the center. You wrapped me up in a rainbow and I held it to my eyes until I cried myself to sleep and woke up lost inside your clouds, far away from where I was Before. I tried to find my way back, but you just stood there, swirling around me, and there was no way out. I think you knew I needed you.

Do you remember April? You were a hurricane, wild and frantic and so heavy. We were at a long marble table speckled with birthday balloons and a flock of people coming and going around our thick blanket of black clouds. I smiled and you screamed, I laughed and your raging wind stung my eyes and made me cry. It was too bright, you cried, too bright against our stormy backdrop and you said if I took you home, we could turn the lights off and if I lied on my side you’d tuck me into the sheets, you’d fold yourself over me and keep me safe and we could dream of Before for as long as we wanted. That day still sits on the crown of my head, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for it.

Do you remember July? You were a roaring wave, sometimes mighty and terrified and you’d push me down into wet gravely sand, but you always let me go and pulled me back up. Sometimes you broke before you hit the shore and you’d gently lap at my feet. We were free falling, free from the pressure of time and we ran down an endless path, invincible to the mysteries it held, just you and me in a watercolor sunset and we’d run for miles until we were lost in the jungle. We met a princess with golden locks and she drove us home with the top down and the wind in our hair and she came inside with us and danced with us in the kitchen. I asked her if she was afraid of you and she wrapped us both in a quilt and gave us a kiss on the forehead and one of her t-shirts before she flew away. I took you to the beach and I tossed you into the ocean and you drifted away with the other waves like you’d been there the whole time. We strolled through drifting storms and collected brightly colored drinks and someone painted me black and gold and green and we paraded through the streets wearing nothing but paint and confidence. You ask me if I'll plant you back there, amongst the other waves, and I tell you, yes, one day; just hold on a little longer.

Do you remember August? You were a dark storm, pouring rain with loud claps of thunder. It was hot and bright and we were on a boat and the music was pulling everyone in but you. I sat in the sun under your cloud, begging you to stop bleeding all over everything. Finally, I made you a bandage out of tequila and lime juice and I breathed you out in a sigh of relief, and for the first time in the After, I was light enough to dance on my bare feet. You brewed in the corner watching me, until the boat rocked you to sleep. The day ended, I gathered your sleeping form in my sunburnt arms and we walked under a velvety black summer sky. There was a joke made at my expense and I pretended to be insulted but I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me, an arm went over my shoulder into a sweet hug, a playful touch on my abdomen and you swelled with contentment. You remind me of that day often. “Will I ever sleep like that again?” you ask me. I tell you I hope so.

Do you remember October? You were a steady downpour, fast, fat droplets, but we found a magic crystal, rosy pink with flecks of silver, and it smelled like sage and cardamom and when I held it, the rain would roll like velvet down my skin. You begged me for a cold cheap beer to drown you in but instead I strapped you to my wrist and I pulled you into my bubble on roller skates clutching my magic crystal so I wouldn't fall. I fell anyway, and I heard you laugh, a real laugh. I felt you let me go for the first time and you danced around me. You collected that day like a trophy.

Do you know where we are now? You're a grey whisp of a cloud, a glittering fog overhead. We're in a big bright bubble. The light doesn't hurt you anymore.

You have an opinion on everything. I can’t pick out a pair of socks without you telling me what you think. You seep into my joy and my fear. Roads that were once downhill slopes climb up steeply, where they were once empty and free of obstacles you've pushed large rotting trees into the path. But out of the rot, you still bloom flowers for me. You push the branches aside and you swim right under me. Your current formed and shaped me into a sturdy mountain.

You marvel at every detail. I appreciate your wonder. You study every bead of rain, every streak of light in the sky, every shape the moon makes. Because of you, the grass sings to me. The wind tells me its secrets. Sometimes I wonder if you came from heaven.

If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone? I don’t want you to disappear. I don’t want to lose you. I want to run with you in the sun until you melt down into a silver puddle, and then I want to bottle you up and embed you right in the middle of me. I think you might need me now.

[noordinarymoment]

This painting was an early one in my portal series. I was processing, visually and experientially, watching my dad's life get smaller and come closer to its end. I was experiencing the loss of my dad before his death too. (Dad had PD-related dementia.) The portals are ineffable and unique to each of us (like thumbprints)... You choose or things are chosen for you. Either way, you have to go through. You have to leave some choices behind and there can be grief in that as well. . For years now, I've been working to normalize grief in my life. I am learning to not make it wrong. It's complicated and hard work. But, you can make it through and you can be transformed by it. . Title: YOU JUST WILL Medium: Acrylic on canvas Size: 12"x12"x.25" Available at my online gallery, link in bio. . #griefjourney #intuitiveartist #portals #ambiguousloss #workingartist #artforsale #linkinbio #abstractart #artcollectors #socalartist #womenartists (at Southern California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXCH5I3v-QX/?utm_medium=tumblr

[inthenameofthebody]

Ambiguous Loss

How to live with the pain of uncertainty.

[katiemccrorycph]

The Ambiguous Losses of 2020

If, like me, you are prone to a little reflection during this particularly sparse bit of the calendar, when Christmas has ended and nothing else has begun – the armpit of the year, as I recently heard it described – then 2020 really begs the question: where the fuck do I begin?

It’s tempting to try and frame this raging dumpster fire of a year in a way that pulls out the positives; but I know of too many people with too much heartache to condescend in that way. Take what you can, only if you can, and put the rest on the bonfire. Instead, I’ve been circling back to something I learned about earlier this year, whilst listening to a Brené Brown podcast on one of my daily marches around the reservoir with Órla lashed to me. It’s the idea of “ambiguous loss”.

All of us experience loss of many shades throughout our lives, and for the most part we can point to the cause of the pain – what was once there and no longer is – and work through our grief in a coherent way. Ambiguous loss is when we lack the facts of the losing, or the loss just doesn’t make sense; and it’s relational, so in a therapy setting it’s used to help treat people who have lost a loved one, either physically or psychologically. A family member going missing, or developing Alzheimers, can produce catastrophic feelings of ambiguous loss, for example.

On this podcast episode, the discussion around ambiguous loss opened up to address the kinds of experiences millions of us have had during 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic. Many – too many – have experienced loss that you can find a Hallmark card to commiserate with; but many more have sat with grief that often defies categorisation. I think of this kind of loss as being the “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” variety. The people who could’ve gotten the grades for the University they desperately wanted to go to; the people who would’ve been saying their “I dos” in front of family and friends; the people who should’ve been spending the holidays with family, rather than entirely on their own. The things we would be doing, if it weren’t for a pandemic. Something inside me flickered with recognition.

Ambiguous loss was the first time I felt I had a way to talk about my experience of the preceding months. I gave birth to my daughter four weeks before Denmark (where I live) went into national lockdown in March of this year. She had been years in the making and arrived a month too early after a birth that went substantially outside of the plan, leaving me wrestling with this slippery feeling about how things had gone. Hell, you don’t need to have a baby during a pandemic to wrestle with ambiguous loss; the entire experience of becoming a parent in any situation is measured out by what you’re expecting and what you actually get. The ambiguity lies in what you know you’re wildly grateful for – health and happiness – and what you still feel you’ve been denied.

I was new to motherhood, so I had no benchmark for normal or reasonable, but I couldn’t shake this feeling that what I was going through was filled with should’ve, could’ve, would’ves thanks to the pandemic. My parents would’ve been able to visit their first grandchild before she turned six months old. I should’ve had health visitors keeping tabs on my baby’s weight gain and flagging the tongue tie it took us four months to diagnose after weeks and weeks of constant screaming. I could’ve seen friends and met with a local mothers’ group for comfort and support when I was at my wits end. When we fervently practice gratitude – which I do, in the absence of any spirituality – we don’t always allow ourselves the space to grieve the ambiguous losses we also sit with.

If life is forward momentum, then 2020 has felt like cosmic stasis. We create meaning for the passage of time through milestones and events that tether us to shared cultural experiences by being physically together. I think about the missed proms, graduations, weddings, dates, jobs, families. I think about people who have been forced to pause fertility treatments, operations, therapy, education, work and training. I think about the people who spent their birthdays and Hen Dos and weddings and christenings and bar mitzvahs and Eid and Christmas with the people they love the very most on a video screen. I think about the people starting new jobs without meeting any of their co-workers. I think about the women who had to give birth without their partners in the delivery room. I think about the grandparents living in Care Homes who haven’t hugged a single family member since the pandemic began. I don’t think they make Hallmark cards for these things.

Understanding what ambiguous loss can feel like helped me work through a big pile of emotional crap I’d been burying with regards to my return to work in October, when my daughter was eight months old. I was ready and excited to get back to work, but when I thought about the practicalities something resembling anger washed over me. I wasn’t actually “returning to work” because my company was rightly urging all of us to work from home wherever possible. I couldn’t even return to a desk, because our home office was now a nursery and my desk was locked away in the basement. I’d already gone on maternity leave without so much as a goodbye after my waters broke one random Wednesday night, and now I was returning without so much as a hello. No hugs from much-missed co-workers, no gossip over lunch, no impractical heels and dangly earrings and overpriced coffee-to-go on the train as I shapeshift from Mother Mode into Professional Mode, ready to get shit done.

So when people ask how it’s been finishing up with maternity leave, I tell them the truth: pretty crap, overall. Not because I miss my baby, which people dolefully ask with that patronising head tilt, but because I miss actually being at work. The loss lies in the reality meeting none of my expectations. The ambiguity lies in knowing that making this kind of whimpering complaint makes me sound like an entitled arsehole; grief cannot possibly co-exist with the layers of privilege that affords me paid maternity leave and stable, safe and dignified employment to begin with. So let me say, once again, that when we fervently practice gratitude, we don’t always allow ourselves the space to grieve the ambiguous losses we also feel. It has to be both/and, not either/or. I’m really grateful to return to work and it’s been a complete shit-show.

So this New Year, if you find yourself wrestling with that slippery feeling as you try and place your individual misery in the context of all those who’ve suffered more, I urge you to find the time to grieve all your ambiguous losses. For all the things you have done, take a moment to accept the things you haven’t. For all the intentions well made, find the space to hold the plans and dreams that didn’t manifest this year. If you need permission, let this be the slip that gets you out of Stoicism 101, and lets you feel desperately sad about the silly but meaningful stuff you thought you’d be doing. Consider this the Hallmark card that says “I’m sorry Fresher’s Week was a total bust” or “Congratulations on your marriage even if you cried on your Zoom wedding day!” or “It’s definitely not the best of circumstances to start a new job!”.

And then throw it into the rest of the burning trash that is 2020.

[fosterateentheysaid]

When Boychild left, I was so caught up navigating life with Girlchild that I didn't have time to really stop and process how much I damn miss that kid. I miss them both, my son and my daughter, and the way they would wind up draped across the foot of my bed at night, petting cats and telling me wishes.